Pawn, an inductive storage pulsed power generator for high power applications

A pulsed power generator, Pawn, has been assembled at the Naval Research Laboratory. It employees inductive energy storage and opening switch power conditioning techniques with high energy density capacitors as the primary energy store. The energy stored in the capacitor bank is transferred to a vacuum inductor in /spl sime/15 /spl mu/s. Wire fuses provide the first stage of pulse compression. Further power conditioning is obtained with a plasma erosion opening switch. Initial results are encouraging. Starting with a /spl sime/38-kV charging voltage on the capacitor bank. a 0.26-TW, 85-ns full width at half maximum electrical power pulse was delivered to an electron-beam diode. The final values of dl/dt and peak load voltage were higher than the initial values by factors of /spl sime/65 and /spl sime/ 11, respectively. A detailed analysis indicates how this performance can be improved.